DREAMing on the Virtual Stage: Readings of Plays in Progress

This event is part of the 2021 PEN World Voices Festival of International Literature. Visit pen.org/festival to learn more and get tickets for other events.

From all corners of the earth, a group of writers have gathered to write epic plays about everything they know and everything they believe in—in seven pages or less. They have queered your sacred texts, reimagined folklore, excavated ghosts, and made absolute magic. Come sit with us and watch these emerging writers birth new plays and new forms.

This digital event will start at 7:00pm ET / 4:00pm PT via YouTube. If you have any questions, please visit our FAQs.

Live captioning is available for all PEN World Voices Festival virtual programs. For this co-produced event, we can provide live captioning if requested up to 7 business days before the event. We will make every effort to provide accommodation for requests made outside of that window of time. To place a request, please contact Gaven Trinidad ([email protected]).

DREAMing Out Loud is supported by public funds from the New York City Mayor’s Office of Media and Entertainment (MOME), with special thanks to the Vilcek Foundation.

Presented in partnership with National Queer Theater and New York Theatre Workshop.

National Queer Theater Logo

New York Theatre Workshop Logo


Victor I. Cazares HeadshotVictor I. Cazares joined DREAMing Out Loud as a new teaching artist in 2021. They are a nonbinary poz queer Indigenous Mexican artist (enby PQIMA for short) who has had stints at Yale University, Brown University, and other less prestigious centers of rehabilitation. Like any border child, they were born twice: once in El Paso, TX and another in San Lorenzo, Chihuahua. Cazares lives, forages, and produces their own social media telenovelas in Portland, OR. Their virtual plays, Pinching Pennies with Penny Marshall and Holiday Follies, premiered at the New York Theatre Workshop where they are the Tow Playwright-in-Residence. Other plays include: American (Tele)Visions, Ramses contra los monstruos, We Were Eight Years in Powder, and When We Write With Ashes.


About National Queer Theater

National Queer Theater is an innovative theater collective dedicated to celebrating the brilliance of generations of LGBTQ artists and providing a home for unheard storytellers and activists. By serving our elders, youth, and working professionals, NQT creates a more just future through radical and evocative theater experiences and free community classes. Believing in the power of theater to effect sweeping social change, NQT cultivates a more just, joyous, and empowered intersectional queer community that is celebrated in all corners of society. Through their art and free community programs, they create and organize together, working towards a more equitable vision of a world bursting with pride. www.nationalqueertheater.org; FB/IG: @nationalqueertheater

About New York Theatre Workshop

New York Theatre Workshop empowers visionary theatre-makers and brings their work to adventurous audiences through productions, artist workshops, and educational programs. NYTW nurtures pioneering new writers alongside powerhouse playwrights, engages inimitable genre-shaping directors, and supports emerging artists in the earliest days of their careers. NYWT has mounted over 150 productions from artists whose work has shaped the very idea of what theatre can be, including Jonathan Larson’s Rent; Tony Kushner’s Slavs! and Homebody/Kabul; Doug Wright’s Quills; Claudia Shear’s Blown Sideways Through Life and Dirty Blonde; Paul Rudnick’s The Most Fabulous Story Ever Told and Valhalla; Martha Clarke’s Vienna: Lusthaus; Will Power’s The Seven and Fetch Clay, Make Man; Caryl Churchill’s Mad Forest, Far Away, A Number and Love and Information; Jessica Blank and Erik Jensen’s Aftermath; Rick Elice’s Peter and the Starcatcher; Glen Hansard, Markéta Irglová, and Enda Walsh’s Once; David Bowie and Enda Walsh’s Lazarus; Dael Orlandersmith’s The Gimmick and Forever; and eight acclaimed productions directed by Ivo van Hove. NYTW’s productions have received a Pulitzer Prize, 25 Tony Awards, and assorted Obie, Drama Desk, and Lucille Lortel Awards. NYTW is represented on Broadway with Anaïs Mitchell’s Hadestown, developed with and directed by Rachel Chavkin, and Jeremy O. Harris’s Slave Play, directed by Robert O’Hara. Website: www.nytw.org; Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram: @nytw79